Review: Rain by Amanda Sun

American Katie Green has decided to stay in Japan. She’s started to build a life in the city of Shizuoka, and she can’t imagine leaving behind her friends, her aunt and especially Tomohiro, the guy she’s fallen in love with. But her return is not as simple as she thought. She’s flunking out of Japanese school and committing cultural faux pas wherever she goes. Tomohiro is also struggling—as a Kami, his connection to the ancient gods of Japan and his power to bring drawings to life have begun to spiral out of control.

When Tomo decides to stop drawing, the ink finds other ways to seep into his life—blackouts, threatening messages and the appearance of unexplained sketches. Unsure how to help Tomo, Katie turns to an unexpected source for help—Jun, her former friend and a Kami with an agenda of his own. But is Jun really the ally he claims to be? In order to save themselves, Katie and Tomohiro must unravel the truth about Tomo’s dark ancestry, as well as Katie’s, and confront one of the darkest gods in Japanese legend.

Review:

If I thought Ink was predictable, Rain took us in a different direction than what I originally thought.There were still some flaws in the book, but I liked Katie’s character development. She still sucks at Japanese and is the ever so awkward gaijin がいじん (foreigner) dating a Japanese, but she’s determine to learn and I like that. Yuki and Tanaka-kun plays more of a role, but I still fail to see how Katie becomes Yuki’s BFF when Yuki’s not in the picture much. Yuki is great because she constantly reminds Katie that she’s there for her, but Katie doesn’t actually lean on Yuki.

In Rain, we get to learn more about the Kamis and speculate Katie’s role. I liked how the author interweaved Japanese history. But, anyways, I really didn’t see that twist concerning Tomohiro coming at all or even the importance of Katie’s birth. While Tomohiro insists that Katie runs in the opposite direction something draws them together, making Katie impossible to stay away from each other. Their romance comes epically fast paced, which for some reason I find that their romance is unbelievable. However, there’s so many feels between these two that you can’t help ship them together and I think the author does a good job with this. I also liked learning more about the Japanese culture, but the random Japanese phrases that is being tossed still leaves me quite confused if the characters are speaking in English or Japanese. This is probably a minor detail, but I’m sure Tomohiro, Yuki, Jun, and everyone else’s English isn’t THAT good.

I thought Rain was an improvement from Ink, but even though it still has its flaws I’m addicted to this series. Now that I have a couple of my questions answered from Ink I can’t wait to see how everything ends in the final book that comes out next year.

0 Replies to “Review: Rain by Amanda Sun”

I haven’t read book #1 yet, but I reeeally want to. I know this is bad but…I basically want to read them for the epic covers. They’re just so fantastic! Beautiful art, just goooorgeous. *ahem* Okay, I promise I’ll stop drooling over the covers and actually leave a (semi) intelligent comment. I like it when sequels actually do better than their original. Pity about the romance isn’t always believable though. I get a bit twitchy when romances seem sloppily put together. *sigh* STILL. This one is on the TBR.

I definitely fell in love with the cover for this series not to mention the drawings that Tomohiro does throughout the book. They’re so gorgeous, it’s hard not to want to read the book because of that.